


Great Big Brain In The Sky

by CanCan_jpg (TrashCan_Inc)



Category: DC Young Animal, DCU (Comics), Doom Patrol, Doom Patrol (2016)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Douglas Adams References, F/F, Gen, Internal Monologue, Surreal, Surrealism, but I tried to write it to read a bit like a doom patrol issue!, casey is very confused and gay and it’s a big mood, flashbacks to young casey brinke because that character design is so cool, gerard way canon, literally most of this fic is internal monologue, post-Milk Wars, weird memories, “hey ferb where’s terry”
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-07
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-04-19 18:48:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14243559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrashCan_Inc/pseuds/CanCan_jpg
Summary: Casey Brinke and the Doom Patrol are making the most of the New Universe, regenerated since the Milk Wars.But something feels a bit off, and it’s not the fact that Cliff looks weird, or the lingering smell of sour milk in the air.[written in the time period between the end of Milk Wars and the release of Doom Patrol#11]





	Great Big Brain In The Sky

**Author's Note:**

> Doom Patrol is such a wonderful universe to play with, because anything goes, and it really helps to test how far your imagination goes! 
> 
> Also, I really wanted to write Casey thinking about her childhood. And Terry None.

“Hold on tight, Larry! This ride is gonna get a bit bumpy!!”

There were a few strange things one could point out this situation. Many, in fact. There was the fact that the individual holding onto Casey Brinke’s back was seemingly mummified. There was the fact that the aforementioned mummy was, in fact, unconscious, and was failing to do much real ‘holding on’. There was the questionable liquid that Casey presumed was drool, seeping through Larry’s bandaged face and onto her back.

There was the fact that Casey Brinke had both red hair _and_ green eyes, _two_ whole semi-rare genetic pigment mutations, which should have really made her realise her status as a fictional character a lot sooner. _Goddamnit_ , Danny.

But strangest of all, was that Casey Brinke, EMT extraordinaire, was driving a _motorbike_.

Casey was not exactly sure when she’d learned to drive a motorcycle. Having apparently only been alive on this physical plane for 3 months, but feeling conscious of so, _so much more_ time, her memories of when she could’ve learned were a bit foggy. There were multiple memories, and there were no memories, compartments of information filed very haphazardly, based on whoever wrote her in whatever era. But as for this era, she assumed her innate powers of Driving Fast At Any Time And Always Getting There Early, applied to all vehicles, not just ambulances. And now she really wanted to try airplanes.

But the non-ambulance vehicle of the day was a motorbike. And thus, here she was, carrying Larry Trainor’s physical body while following the Negative Spirit, as the Doom Patrol took on a being made of multiple unearthly heartbeats. The Negative Spirit was doing their... thing?, flying around and... whooshing at things, all energy-like.

Jane was doing her whole ‘Contacting My Storage Drive Of Personalities To Find One With Useful Powers™️’ shindig. (Casey sometimes wondered if Jane’s brain had a storage space limit. Like an internal hard drive. Could brains run out of storage space? Was there a great big brain Cloud Storage in the sky? Did scientists use it for their important mental files? Should she really be wondering that right now?)

Flex Mentallo frequently flexed his muscles to send shockwaves at the eldritch abomination in the middle of the street intersection (and Casey was pretty sure she kept seeing the text “hero of the beach” appear above him whenever he did that, which she used to find somewhat alarming). Occasionally, Flex would try to verbally reason with the creature, but all he would be met with was the sound of pulsating emotion, infinite sadness, infinite madness, infinite wonder and folly, rushes of adrenaline, and the odd sickly bloody squelching noise the Patrol all pretended they weren’t hearing.

Cliff Steele, no longer the great RobotMan, but now struggling to adapt to his new role as Average FleshMan, stood at the sidelines for now. He had a delightful time yelling motivation at the Doom Patrol, and yelling obscenities at the creature. Good for him.

Which left Casey... driving. Driving to victory, driving to safety, almost driving through time. Driving herself around the bend, so to speak. Driving herself into folly. Driving nowhere fast, then and now. Driving in circles, which were very clearly never her intended function. Driving the body of Larry Trainor to meet with the Negative Spirit, as the two became one again.

And that was it.

From what Casey could understand, Jane had managed to pull some cosmic witchy entity out of her brain that was able to conjure an intergalactic porthole, sending the eldritch abomination off to another plane. She wasn’t entirely sure where.

On the plus side, no one was harmed! Sort of. There was minimal collateral damage! Sort of. The smoking car wrecks, and the traffic lights snapped like popsicle sticks, weren’t their fault. Sort of. Either way, Casey felt satisfied at a job well done, and everyone was feeling great.

Sort of.  
________

Douglas Adams once wrote that “In the beginning, the Universe was created. This had made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move”. As Casey loitered a familiar street, she wondered how many people were rolling their eyes at the idea that this universe had to be created _again_.

She wondered how many people were _absolutely shitting themselves_ over there being a _Multiverse_.

Casey Brinke, for one, was feeling an inbuilt sense of _incorrect_ -ness about it. It wasn’t a feeling she was built to think of. She was supposed to be “plucky” and “spunky” and overly optimistic, a hero for the kids, a hero for the ill, a hero for... someone?? Captain of the St Michael’s Children’s Hospital Jamboree Fighter Squadron once upon a time, dressed in a girl scout uniform and shouting things like “gee golly!”, with the type of wholesome catch-phrases you yelled with a fist in the air, a thumbs up, and a smile on your face. She kicked a warlord in the face in her mary jane shoes and was still wholesome. Like a battle-ready _Lil‘ Orphan Annie_. In fact, the first time Casey ever remembered being in tears, was when her parents died in space.

Or maybe it was at prom...  
Or maybe none of those moments were real.

What was possibly wrong with this universe? Was she losing memories of the old one? She couldn’t even remember most of the details of the fight before its destruction. No one could.

She remembered the hospital. She remembered Sam, who was apparently now somewhere with his family in... Hell? Magic Land?

She remembered her apartment, one of the only things that felt like her own. She considered going back there, but somehow didn’t think that’d be easy. The cold emptiness in there would be from something far more than just the gaping hole in the wall...

She’d need a new roommate, she supposed, considering her last one was either dead or something close to it; but that was too difficult to think of right now. She figured she could try call Lotion, but she had no idea where he was. And quite frankly, it’d be a bit of an awkward conversation. The Curious Incident of The Cat In The Night Time was not to be discussed at this point.

Besides, looking for a new roommate seemed too much like looking for a Terry replacement, and she couldn’t do that. Terry wasn’t replaceable like some cheap mass-produced battery. Terry None was an electric firebolt.

She tap-danced at ungodly hours, as if she was preparing for something, and she’d excitedly pull a groggy, just-awoken Casey along into a dance, teach her some moves; she’d gladly pretend Casey _totally_ wasn’t rusty from the many _years_ that had elapsed since childhood tap-dance lessons she may or may not have had.

Terry would try her best to remember your favourite pizza topping, and how you liked your eggs (she would, more often than not, get it _completely_ _wrong_. But she tried. Sometimes it was topped with all mushrooms, twice they’d had pizza topped entirely with pecan nuts, and once a pizza looked like it had been topped with torn fragments of the fabric of reality itself, but she still tried.).

Terry never looked out of place, regardless of what she was wearing, whether it was a flapper girl costume or a sanitary worker’s jumpsuit or a space suit or a business suit or...  
—that said, she was always noticeable, with sleek black hair that was practically _unfairly_ pretty, and dark black eyes that made you feel like you were staring into the abyss of space and it was staring back at you and it was _wonderful_. She always looked like she knew too much. Maybe she did. Maybe she didn’t.

She was Casey’s prom date. She was Casey’s friend in the scouts. She was gifting Casey with a model kit for her birthday, her real birthday. She was the person with her when she’d attempted to fly her first aeroplane, the two of them hand-in-hand as they decided to explore the giant Brain Cloud in the sky.

At this point, Casey wasn’t bothering to sift through which memories were fake and which were real events. But she also wasn’t bothering to turn around and go back to Danny’s Cabaret to sleep, like she’d planned.

And that’s when she noticed the tail of an aircraft sticking out the side of an apartment block.

It was clearly old. Or at least looked old. Like 1940’s, World War II, Big-Propellors-On-The-Outside kind of vintage. and it had clearly crashed through an apartment wall that Casey knew _already had a hole in it_.

She made a quick duck to a nearby alleyway dumpster, pulling out an old, dented, damp baseball bat whose grip tape was unravelling. If she was gonna explore alone, she needed some kind of defence against weird crap. And Casey knew baseball... she _knew_ she knew baseball; she had been written as having played it in school, and she had a bat in her _**real**_ room for crying out loud.

But baseball knowledge wasn’t helping her not fidget with the bat as she scaled the stairs in the dark, muscle memory guiding her legs as she tried not to think “ _oh GOD, THIS SHIT KEEPS HAPPENING TO MY APARTMENT_ ” and “maybe I was somehow _meant_ to find this?”. Baseball knowledge didn’t stop her creeping sense of Weird Unavoidable Destiny. Baseball knowledge wasn’t stopping her imagination from wanting to run wild with making up shapes in the eerie darkness.

And the baseball bat was immediately, involuntarily, dropped to the floor with a soft thud, as Casey entered the smokey room, and saw the first glittery heeled boot step out from the cockpit.

The metaphorical casey.exe had temporarily stopped functioning at this point, meaning her brain wasn’t doing so well at connecting signals to the rest of her body, and what was intended as a sweet “ _oh my god, where have you been?_ ”, mistranslated as a drowsy “ _where the fuck did you get that plane??_ ”

“I told ya, Casey!” said the pilot, straightening her hat, appearing miraculously unharmed, if very, _**very**_ dusty. “I used to build _really elaborate_ model kits as a kid!”  
Terry patted the un-dented plastic nose of the aircraft with an elegant, gloved hand, brushing away bits of wall.

“Kinda dusty, but she’s still working! You wanna hop in for a ride? I’ve got so, _so much_ to tell ya!”


End file.
